EU opens investigation into Facebook and Instagram for violating the Digital Services Act

The European Commission has opened formal proceedings to assess whether Meta, provider of Facebook and Instagram, may have violated the Digital Services Act , the European law that protects against targeted disinformation and manipulation by third countries. The alleged violations concern Meta's policies and practices regarding misleading advertising and political content on its services. They also concern Meta's non-availability of an effective third-party real-time civic and election monitoring tool prior to the European Parliament elections, in the context of Meta's deprecation of its CrowdTangle real-time public analysis tool without adequate replacement. In addition, the Commission suspects that the mechanism for reporting illegal content on the services (Notice-and-Action) as well as the user redress and internal complaint mechanisms 'do not comply with the requirements of the Digital Services Act and that there are shortcomings in their provision by Meta'.

The procedure opened - explains Palazzo Berlaymont - by the European Commission will focus on three areas:

Misleading advertising and disinformation: the Commission suspects that Meta is not complying with its DSA obligations regarding the dissemination of misleading advertising, disinformation campaigns and coordinated inauthentic behaviour in the EU. The proliferation of such content may pose a risk to civic discourse, electoral processes and fundamental rights, as well as to consumer protection;

Visibility of political content: the Commission suspects that Meta's strategy related to the "approach to political content", which downgrades political content in Instagram and Facebook's recommendation systems, including their feeds, does not comply with Dsa obligations. The investigation will focus on the compatibility of this policy with transparency and user redress obligations, as well as risk assessment and mitigation requirements for civic discourse and electoral processes;

The unavailability of an effective third-party tool for real-time monitoring of civic discourse and elections in view of the upcoming European Parliament elections and other elections in several Member States. Meta is in the process of deprecating 'CrowdTangle', a public insights tool that allows real-time monitoring of elections by researchers, journalists and civil society. including through visual dashboards, without an adequate replacement; - The mechanism for reporting illegal content. The Commission suspects that the mechanism, which allows users to report the presence of Meta content, does not comply with the obligations of the Dsa. The EU now expects Meta to respond to the Commission's findings 'within five working days'. The initiation of formal proceedings empowers the Commission to take further enforcement measures, such as interim measures and non-compliance decisions. The Commission is also entitled to accept commitments from Meta to remedy the issues raised in the proceedings.